ALLENTOWN — A 1,400-capacity concert hall hosting 200 to 250 events a year would be part of a proposed $250 million Five City Center complex in Allentown, developers announced Thursday.

The concert hall would have a feature unique in the Lehigh Valley: a retractable wall that could open onto an adjoining park. That would expose its stage to about 1,000 more people on the lawn for indoor/outdoor concerts.

The venue would bring in national touring music acts in a variety of genres and would be comparable to national chain music halls. The goal would be to draw 300,000 people a year and make it one of the busiest venues in the world.

The concert hall, in tandem with a new nearly 2-acre park, would create an entertainment complex along Seventh Street between Hamilton and Walnut. Plans call for large outdoor LED screens that could show sporting events and more for communal gatherings at the park, and a beer garden that would operate year-round.

City Center Investment Corp. is proposing a downtown Allentown project that would include the tallest building in the Lehigh Valley.

City Center Investment Corp. is proposing a downtown Allentown project that would include the tallest building in the Lehigh Valley.

The entertainment complex was announced at a Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon, during which Center City CEO J.B. Reilly outlined his development company's five-year plan for downtown Allentown.

Reilly on Wednesday unveiled plans for the company's newest project, Five City Center. It would include the Lehigh Valley's tallest building — the 24-story Innovation Tower at Eighth and Hamilton streets — 225 upscale apartments, a garage with more than 800 parking spaces and the park.

Developers say the entertainment complex would be a spark adding energy and vitality to the revitalized downtown with almost nightly activity for the thousands of new employees and residents expected to move downtown.

"Part of revitalizing a city is to gain popularity," said Jerry Deifer Jr., who has partnered with City Center Investment Corp. to develop the concert venue and entertainment complex. Deifer created the concept and design of the successful Sands Bethlehem Event Center and has been involved in nearly a dozen venue projects since.

"If you have 8,000 people down here, they all have restaurants to go to for happy hour," he said. "They don't have anything else to do. Activity builds success, and I feel like what we're building here is what is needed in downtown Allentown just to add to the continuing excitement."

Programming, Deifer said, would be comparable to that of some of the busiest club-sized venues: House of Blues Chicago, Irving Plaza in New York City and 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.

The concert venue would be on the first floor of a 12-story apartment building at Seventh and Walnut that is to be the first piece of Five Center City. Plans are to break ground in October and open the apartments and concert hall in fall 2018, Reilly said.

"We look forward to partnering with Jerry," Reilly said. "His experience in developing entertainment complexes, coupled with his vision for this venue, makes him the perfect person to lead this project.

"City Center aims to activate the downtown, create more entertainment options with broad appeal and build on the success of the entertainment district."

PHOTO GALLERY: Downtown Allentown has undergone drastic changes over the years, most notably with the construction of the PPL Center, followed by office, retail and residential complexes. A look at the development changing the downtown.

(The Morning Call staff)

A new venue could put additional pressure on other Lehigh Valley concert venues such as Easton's State Theatre, which says it has been hurt by the growing competition to book acts and for people's time and entertainment dollars. Three major concert venues have opened in the past six years: Bethlehem's Musikfest Cafe in 2011, the Sands Bethlehem Event Center in 2012 and Allentown's PPL Center in 2014.

Deifer said the new venue won't be competing for the same audience — "This is going to be a rock club," he said — and developers took pains to plan a venue that would complement, not compete with, others in the Valley.

Reilly agreed: "We think it will complement what is here already."

"The idea of this is to play into whatever else is in this region," Deifer said. He said that with the new venue, the Lehigh Valley will have a venue for every size music act.

A new concert hall will likely occupy space at the new Five City Center complex in downtown Allentown.

Here are the other competing concert venues in the Lehigh Valley and their capacities:

Shelley Brown, president of the State Theatre, said Sands Bethlehem Event Center also said before opening that it would program only big-name entertainment. But it has since booked 100 artists that previously played the State, she said.

Annual State Theatre attendance dropped from 100,000 before the Sands opened to 70,000, Jamie Balliet, State's senior vice president for marketing, said recently.

"There's only so much [entertainment] money to go around," Brown said. "Anybody that's in the business will tell you that. Symphony Hall is sitting a few blocks away [from the proposed new venue] with its great charm and history. It seems so obvious to me. I don't believe in, 'If you build it, they will come.' But builders apparently do."

"A rock club downtown will be cool — that's a great idea for a downtown vibe. We wish them success," Brosious said. "I just don't know how many shows a year the Valley can support."

Reilly said the venue would build on the success of PPL Center to create "really an entertainment district." He said one of the original goals of revitalizing Allentown was to "create a fun and exciting place that people wanted to be."

"We need to create a space where people want to be," he said. "We need to continue to focus on this vibrant place. We need to continue to get people downtown."

The new Allentown venue would have a strong design element to make it unique, Deifer said, with perhaps an art deco feel. The indoor/outdoor beer garden would double as the concert hall's restaurant/refreshment center, he said.

Deifer plans to work with major promoters to offer a wide variety of musical genres and shows for all ages. Or, perhaps more familiar to area audiences, the types of shows Allentown's Crocodile Rock Cafe — once one of the busiest club-sized venues in the world — booked before it closed in 2013, but from "a talent pool with a little more depth." Crocodile Rock's closing created a void for that size music venue in Allentown, Deifer said.

Target acts for the venue would be rising names, such as Kelsea Ballerini, who was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist this year, and higher-level acts looking to play a date between Philadelphia and New York. And there's the possibility of booking some top acts looking to play more intimate spaces; The Fillmore Philadelphia has had success with that.

Attendance of 300,000 people a year would be more than Sands Bethlehem Event Center draws. In 2015, the Sands sold 288,126 tickets to 140 concerts to make it the second-busiest venue of its size in the world.

Deifer is equally excited about activities for the contiguous park. He compared it to Center City Philadelphia, where in winter families can visit with Santa and go ice skating, or The Standard Biergarten under the High Line in New York City.

Deifer envisions bringing back motorcycle nights that once operated at the former Banana Joe's on Hamilton Street in Allentown, perhaps bocce or giant Jenga games, or viewing parties on the LED screens when the Philadelphia Flyers are in the playoffs or for movie nights on the lawn.

There also would be outdoor concerts apart from the indoor music venue.

jmoser@mcall.com

Twitter @johnjmoser

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LEHIGH VALLEY CONCERT VENUES

The capacity for some other Lehigh and Northampton County concert venues: